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Assistant Professor of Visual Art

Sara Black received her MFA from the University of Chicago in 2006 and has since been working as an artist teacher in sculpture, installation art, and performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Northwestern University. Previously, Sara has taught sculpture at the Ox-bow School of Art; drawing at South Suburban College; coordinated and led an arts apprenticeship workshop at the nonprofit Street-Level Youth Media in Chicago; served as a member of the visual arts faculty at the Gary Comer Youth Center; and taught 3-D visual language and experimental design at the University of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology, respectively. Sara was also a co-founder and owner of a social center and cafe at the Experimental Station in Chicago, called Backstory.

Education

M.F.A., Sculpture and Installation, University of Chicago B.A., Environmental Studies and Art, Evergreen State College B.F.A., Sculpture and Painting, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

ART PRACTICE

Within her art practice, Sara works both individually and collaboratively. She was a founder of the artist group Material Exchange which was active in Chicago until 2010, and has since been engaged in a number of other collaborative projects with Chicago-based artists. Sara has also worked as an arts organizer and curator. Her projects use carpentry, wood-working, and repair as a time-based method, inherited wood or other retired objects as a material, and imagine building as a physical means of articulating lived relationships in a constant state of renegotiation.

She’s given talks and presented workshops at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Harvard University, DePaul University, Columbia College, and more. Her work has been exhibited nationally in a variety of spaces including Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, The Smart Museum of Art, The Betty Rymer Gallery, Gallery 400, Hyde Park Art Center, ThreewallsSOLO; Portland’s Museum of Contemporary Craft, and Portland State University; New York’s Park Avenue Armory and Eyebeam: Boston’s Tuft University Gallery, and more.